By Gareth Vaughan
The country's biggest bank is once again the biggest spender on advertising in the industry, spending double that of its nearest rival in the first-half of the 2013 calendar year.
According to Nielsen AIS figures supplied to interest.co.nz based on rate card, ANZ spent a total of $20.8 million on advertising in the first-half of the year. That's up $1.9 million, or 10%, from the $18.9 million the group spent promoting both its ANZ and National Bank brands in the first-half of 2012, when $15.4 million was lavished on ANZ and just $3.5 million on the National Bank. ANZ announced it was phasing out the National Bank brand last September.
The second biggest ad spender was ASB at $10.4 million. That's up $3.3 million, or 46% from the first-half of 2012. The ASB increase comes with the bank having rebranded in February, replacing its "creating futures" tag line with "succeed on", and launching new adverts featuring British actor Brian Blessed.
As ANZ was again the biggest spender and ASB again the second biggest, so Westpac was again third.
Westpac spent $4.9 million. This was down $900,000, or 16%, from the first -half of 2012. Fourth was TSB Bank, whose just under $4.8 million, saw it spend more than bigger rivals BNZ at just under $4.1 million, and Kiwibank at $3.8 million.
BNZ's half-year ad spend was up $1.3 million, or 48%, and Kiwibank's was down $400,000, or 10%. The other major spenders were Rabobank at $2.7 million and the Co-operative Bank, which recently launched a campaign to boost its profile, at $2 million.
Between them the banks spent $55 million on advertising in the first-half of 2013, equivalent to about 53% of what they spent in the full 2012 calendar year. In 2012, the country's banks spent a total of NZ$104.1 million on advertising. That was down about NZ$1.6 million, or 1.5%, from the NZ$105.7 million they spent in 2011.
Combined, the big five banks - ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Kiwibank and Westpac - spent $43.9 million on advertising during the first six months of 2013, up $5.2 million, or 13%, from the same period of last year.
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